The Complete Passover Cookbook Review

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(More customer reviews)This book could be subtitled "The Joy of Passover Cooking" because it does for Passover what the "Joy of Cooking" did for food in general. An incredible variety of recipes, suitable for both gebrochts and non-gebrochts (in 10 years I haven't yet tried them all), with conversion tables and recommendations for substitutions if you live, as I do, in a place where the choice of kosher-for-passover ingredients is limited. My family tells me that each Passover gets more scrumptious than the last, and my husband, who always regarded Pesach as something of a trial because of the restrictions, now eagerly anticipates the Pesach rolls and other delicacies I whip up. No Passover-observing kitchen should be without this book!

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Passover cuisine is no longer limited to the traditional dishes known to our parents and grandparents. In this classic, containing more than 500 clearly written recipes, Frances AvRutick shows us how to make every Passover dish a succulent delight. In nineteen chapters spiced with history, laced with lore, and garnished with cooking suggestions, you will find everything from traditional holiday preparations (try the Russian borscht and light-as-a-feather knaidlach) to modern-day originals (matzo-spinach pie, elegant stuffed drumsticks, matzo meal polenta--to name a few). The Complete Passover Cookbook will help you prepare the kind of Passover you never dreamed possible. New, revised 2008 edition.

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Food for the Soul: Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating Review

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(More customer reviews)The first part of this book, which is not exactly a cookbook, discusses food and the Jewish philosophy as related to eating. Then there is a long discussion of healthy diet (One of my non-Jewish friends out and out told me she thought traditional Jewish cuisine was probably one of the most unhealthy she'd ever run across. I thought about pot-roasted brisket or noodle kugel, laden with butter and eggs, and well, I didn't exactly jump up and protest.)
So who is this book directed to? I suppose it is aimed at anyone eating a glatt-kosher diet with traditional recipes from Bubbe (grandma) and who hasn't found a way to update these traditional foods.
Jewish cooking has kind of a split personality these days; the Eastern European foods come out of a diet of deprivation in a cold climate (or as a friend puts it, where cabbage boiled in duck fat is considered a green, leafy vegetable.) But more recently, Jewish cookbooks have added the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern foods and healthier foods of the Sephardic Jews, who eat chick peas, cous-cous, lentils, and more vegetables in general. The biggest culprits of fat-laden dishes may be pareve (non-meat or milk) and "milchig" or dairy-based dishes. When creating a menu, the foods are either meat-containing and neutral, or dairy-containing and neutral, which means no meat lasagna with cheese or pizza-with-pepperoni, by the way.
Some updated recipes in the back include Sephardic red lentil soup (rather like Turkish red lentil soup) and matzoh brei with asparagus (fried soaked flat cracker-like bread; matzoh can be used as a pasta substitute during Passover.) Also a matzoh lasagna. Hints are given on how to reduce fats and salt in traditional foods.
This is a thoughtful book, probably aimed at those who live in a community where traditional Kosher cooking rules supreme and where change must be weighed against a strong tradition going back for hundreds of years.

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With the information included in this book, you will be well equipped to make healthy food choices and prepare nutritious meals for you and your family. Food for the Soul: Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating addresses nutrition and health from a Jewish perspective. The nutritional information is universal, but tailored to the Jewish population's specific needs; kashrut, lifestyle, Shabbat and holidays, fast days and the unique Jewish culture of food.

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Kosher by Design: Picture Perfect Food for the Holidays & Every Day Review

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(More customer reviews)I received this book as a gift. It is so beautiful that I browsed through it a couple of times before I actually picked it up to find something to cook!
Of the recipes I tested and tasted: Sesame Noodles (I made it without the chicken, and it was a yummy side dish - no leftovers there!!), Lemon Bundt Cake (nice, but not "wow"), Chocolate Pecan Pie (now here's a great find - for all those pecan pie lovers out there, who think the traditional recipe is a drop too rich and sweet, here's one for you!! The chocolate adds the right touch to balance the sweetness in this recipe! Still is great with a cup of milk, but it won't leave you nauseous like regular pecan pie!), and the Challah Napkin Rings came out beautiful and tasty!
I'm planning my Shavuos menu now - first on the list are the Baby Blintzes, of course! (One look at the picture and I knew I have to make it!)

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Secrets of a Jewish Baker: Recipes for 125 Breads from Around the World Review

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(More customer reviews)The point of "Secrets of a Jewish Baker" is not just to provide you with recipes, but rather to help you create professional-quality loaves in your own kitchens. If you find you have difficulty making a truly light and airy loaf of bread, a whole-grain loaf that's tasty as well as nutritious, or a crusty loaf like your favorite baker's, you won't have any trouble with these tasks by the time you've made a few recipes from this book.
The book opens with wonderful notes on basic materials you'll need (as well as optional ones), ingredients, special bakers' techniques, handy tricks and tips to make things easier on yourself, and even a trouble-shooting section to help you figure out what might have gone wrong with a loaf of bread and how to fix it. Usually such sections teach me nothing new; here I definitely learned things.
As for the recipes, they come out nothing short of stunning. The cheese bread disappeared so fast you'd think it had been a figment of our imaginations. Most surprisingly for me, the cracked wheat bread and bran bread disappeared just as quickly-I think of bran as tasteless and unappealing, but these healthy breads were moist, tender, and delicious. The coffee cake made a yummy (if rather sinful) breakfast, as did the peach streusel muffins. The techniques for creating great crusts worked like magic, particularly on the Irish raisin bread, which was similarly delightful.
The book includes a handful of morning "programs" of baking that interleave instructions for several recipes at once, enabling you to easily make a week's worth of bread in one morning. This worked beautifully for us. The recipes also include variations designed for the food processor and the six-quart stand mixer, with different ratios of ingredients to take advantage of those items' form-factors; thus you can easily adapt the recipes to the equipment you have on hand. My only warning is that the stand mixer recipes seem sized to the new, heaviest-duty six-quart stand mixers, so be sure to double-check your mixer's rating for how many cups of flour it can tolerate. (You can always use his basic recipe amounts in your stand mixer if it won't tolerate the higher-quantity mixer variations.)
This is a stunning bread cookbook, particularly for anyone who wants to make professional-quality breads in their home kitchen, or who wants recipes for healthy, whole-grain breads that taste amazing!

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